BREAKDOWN – Al Jefferson season in review – Part 5 – Synergy Sports

PART 5 – MY SYNERGY SPORTS
Taking a look at Al Jefferson via Synergy Sports. Synergy Sports labels every possession as a type of play be it a post up, spot up, hand off, etc. The label is based on how the play ends.

Jefferson uses 48% of his possession on post ups and ranks 19th in the NBA in points per possession on his post ups. 17% of the Jazz offense this year was spot ups and the Jazz were the 10th best spot up team in the NBA. Al had 11 and one’s this year off 549 post up chances.

Only 8% of Al’s possessions came off the pick and roll this year when he was the roll man but he ranked 65th in the NBA hitting on 44 of 90 shots.

Al is not a transition player. In Minnesota he wasn’t a transition player and he hasn’t been in Utah either getting just 28 transition shots the entire season.

Surprisingly, Al doesn’t finish off the offensive rebound well, making just 43 of 96 shots off the offensive rebound ranking him 132 in the NBA.

Comparing 2010-11 to 2011-12 the following pops out. He went from 38% of his offense being post up to 48% this year. Last year he was 74th in the NBA in post up and this year he is 19th, a huge improvement. His shooting percentage out of the post increased as well from 42.7% to 47.5% this year. A year ago he got a higher percentage of his offense off the cut and he is more efficient in those plays. In addition, a year ago he finished 56% of the offensive rebound and this year it was just 45%.

Turning the focus to defense. Here is the Synergy Sports graph on Al defensively.

His post up defense has always been pretty decent and it shows here that players only shot 40% against him on the post up and he almost never fouls allowing just a 40.2% shooting percentage.

He ranks 199th defensively and it is almost entirely due to isolations and spot up. The pick and roll man defense doesn’t come out as badly as it felt during the season.

Compared to 2010-11 he slipped defensively. He ranked 70th in the NBA a year ago. His post up defense was even better holding players to 35.5% and again the synergy numbers had him strong on the pick and roll man. He struggled as well on spot ups and isolation defense but was better in both categories.

It is worth noting that much of Al’s problems on the pick and roll are corralling the ball handler and that doesn’t show on synergy.